National Newspaper Says Scilly Has One Of Slowest Internet Connections

A national newspaper has published data showing Scilly has the seventh slowest internet speeds in the country, over a year since the completion of an ambitious £3.6m project to install a fibre optic link to the mainland.

But BT spokesman Jason Mann says the report in yesterday’s Daily Mirror is not correct.

And he says the data could have been skewed by islanders who have stuck with their older, slow connections.

The figures were taken from an annual study published by telecoms regulator Ofcom in December.

Their data, compiled in June last year, lists the median speed of internet connections in Scilly as 8.1Mbps. Anything over 10Mbps is classed as ‘superfast.’

That puts us at the same level as Pembrokeshire and Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales but ahead of the Western Isles in Scotland, which trails the rest of the country with a median speed of just 6.5Mbps.

The best performing area was Brighton at 30Mbps.

But Jason says Ofcom’s own data on their website contradicts this, giving an average download speed of 22.9Mbps here in Scilly, nearly three times the median figure given in the report.

And he says 99% of island households and businesses can get fibre broadband if they chose to do so.

Jason says the median figure is particularly influenced by the connection speeds of customers who have not yet decided to take up superfast broadband.

Ofcom’s figures show that 374 properties in Scilly, out of a total of 1032, have taken up a faster connection over 30Mbps.

593 are still using lines with less than 10Mbps speed and 92 of those are struggling with less than 2Mbps.

Share this:

11 Responses to National Newspaper Says Scilly Has One Of Slowest Internet Connections

Supetbbman January 17, 2016 at 3:47 pm

It would be interesting to hear how many of these reporting slow speeds are with BT and using WiFi as their main means of connecting to the router. I can tell you that the BT home hub 5 is brilliant as a hard wired router, buy terrible at WiFi.

Nobby Nobbs January 16, 2016 at 11:11 am

Said the radio station on an 80mbps link

You only require 3mbps for steamed video, and on the whole, if people choose the new superfast broadband, then most people, depending on the package they purchase from their communications provider will get speeds in the region of 30-80mbps
There are some customers on the longer routes that will achieve slower speeds, but that’s down to the laws of physics and these customers only number a few dozen out of 2200.

So in all fairness, I think the islands 2200 residents are being well served when it comes to the provision of broadband service, especially when you consider our remote location.

I should add that if ‘as an example’ anywhere between 3-100 people are all trying to connect to a router via wifi, which is connected to a 3mbps link or even an 80mbps link (think of it as 3-80mbps bandwidth/100 people), then yes slow speeds might be experienced as very few routers can operate more than a couple of wifi channels at anyone time. However, any device plugged directly into the router will achieve the maximum speed that is achievable on that particular line.

Very misleading headline.

Andy Hargreaves January 16, 2016 at 12:32 pm

Hi Nobby.
The headline is quoting the Mirror’s story. We contacted BT precisely because we couldn’t understand the report, which is based on published Ofcom data, and we included BT’s response in the story, which is broadly in line with your own findings.

The median speed, as reported by Jason Mann, is probably due to a proportion of islanders sticking to slower broadband lines. Now that is the interesting point as this could be because of the price, the problems in switching or the fact that they just don’t need the higher speeds!
Regards
Andy Hargreaves

Ron Jeremy January 16, 2016 at 9:27 pm

Nobby I’m not allowed to watch steamed videos the wife doesn’t like it.

The Pawn Star January 16, 2016 at 11:00 pm

Cheers Nobby, buffer free mucky ladies, wonderful!

Snake Pliskin2 January 15, 2016 at 5:12 pm

On average for online gaming I get between 29 Mbps and 35 Mbps download speed wired directly to the router!

Sara Corbett January 15, 2016 at 3:23 pm

We were getting speeds of 6Mbps plus in our flat on Jackson’s Hill before the Superfast came in and now it is magic. At home in Somerset we have only about 0.5Mbps and no likelihood in the near future of getting anything faster in the near future although they have Superfast 40Mbps 2 miles down the road. The Daily Mirror have got their facts very wrong this time

John W January 13, 2016 at 4:40 pm

When we stayed on St Mary’s last year, our friend said the broadband speed there was faster than she had in London!

Roger Banfield January 13, 2016 at 7:45 am

I must say that I have been very pleased with the results of going to fibre broadband. Before, my download speeds were in the region of 3Mbps, now they are consistently in the region of 40 Mbps or more, with an up-load speed of about 25 Mbps. i think that any slowness, in connecting with various servers, is the speed at which the servers work, especially at busy times.
Roger Banfield

Stereo MC January 13, 2016 at 1:21 am

It’s quite late at night, and I’m only able to get download speed test results ranging from 6.50 up to 7.29Mbps in a small sampling of tests (albeit not conducted in the most scientific of ways). When I signed up recently for a new broadband contract, fiber wasn’t advertised as available – so we got the next best thing with speeds advertised ‘up to 17Mbps’. I’m not sure how the data is collected, but I’d be curious to know whether someone in our situation would be classed as having ‘superfast’ or not.

Super slow January 12, 2016 at 6:39 pm

Our speed is 1.9 up and 10.98 download they tell us after a dozen or so calls to them we can’t get any better speed we liv within 1/2 mile of a green box that’s bloody slow as far as we are concerned